Child's Play

Church of the Advent Baltimore • Advent 2a • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.

Advent is the season of the church year in which we prepare our minds and hearts for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, not only the yearly commemoration of his coming as a newborn infant to the stable in Bethlehem, but in watchful preparation for the as yet to be realized coming in glory at the end of time, when he will judge the living and the dead in perfect righteousness. So we find ourselves, in Advent, perhaps especially in the Church of the Advent, somewhat torn between two images: the sweet Christ Child in the manger, and the transfigured, majestic figure of the everlasting Judge and King, whose coming is foretold by the wild prophet John the Baptist.

On this Sunday the two images come together. in the prophet Isaiah’s words. The prophet describes the peaceable kingdom, his vision of God’s just and righteous reign. And at first the vision of the one who shall come forth from the root of Jesse sounds like the same mighty judge John the Baptist promises. Here is one upon whom the Spirit rests, who is full of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear of the Lord. Here is one who shall judge with righteousness and equity, whose very voice strikes the earth like a rod, whose breath slays the wicked.

But then the imagery shifts. Suddenly all is peaceful: wild beasts of forest and field no longer prey on the domesticated animals of pasture and barnyard, but graze and nestle beside them. The two worlds, wild and domestic, come together in peace. And, wonder of wonders, all this harmony is orchestrated, brought about and led not by an army of lion-tamers with pistols and whips, or a crowd of Australian alligator wrestlers with cages and anesthetic darts, but by a little child. Even more surprising, infants young enough still to be nursing, and others just starting on solid food, can play with snakes in perfect safety, the archetype of human enmity with the natural world from our infancy in the Garden of Eden — the serpent — has lost it’s poison, and has become a plaything for the children of Adam and Eve. This peaceful lordship that turns the curse of Adam on its head, this peaceable kingdom established on God’s holy mountain is, simply put, child’s play.
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Now, this is not frivolous talk. Few things are more serious than child’s play. I really mean that. Have you ever watched children playing? Children take their play very seriously, and the more deeply involved in play they are, the more intense their concentration. Where else but in play do you see actual wrinkles form on the foreheads of children? Where else but in play do you see little tongues appear at the edges of tiny mouths, as tiny hands struggle to color within the lines, to make a puzzle come out just right, for a doll’s hair be styled in high fashion, or a plastic peg hammered down just so with a plastic hammer into a plastic hole? No, children at play are quite intent on their playing!

Children in a snowball fight are as focused on their battle as any general. And I dare not even mention the intensity of a child apparently glued to a PlayStation! And a five-year-old hosting a tea party for dolls and teddy bears will — should you be honored with an invitation to such an event — enforce upon you a protocol and etiquette as rigorous as a state banquet. The Cabbage Patch twins must always be served first, in recognition of their youth, while Barbie, being a mature young lady, is expected to be patient, and Pooh Bear has to be watched lest he sneak a cookie before the proper time. As you balance the tiny saucer and minuscule teacup, savoring the invisible tea and make-believe cake, you are apt to marvel at the child’s knowledge of etiquette, and stern resolve to enforce it.

Yes, the prophet was right in describing the kingdom of God as child’s play, for child’s play is not frivolous. It is just that we tend to forget this as we grow older. As we age out of the pure, clear world of childhood, we are apt to begin making compromises, to accept less than what we know is right, to move from the clarity of the black and white into those shades of grey. And we tend to see this as maturity. We gain peace at the cost of principle. We become judicious; we weigh profit and loss ratios, and we deal and we compromise. And we settle. And how often do we end up with far less than justice and righteousness for the sake of an imaginary peace — a peace that turns out not to be peace at all.
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But the judge eternal described by Isaiah, comes upon us with the ferocious intensity of a child: a single-minded child who can look straight through our adult compromises to the burning truth of our failures. He does not judge by what he sees or hears, this eternal judge whose coming we await. What? A judge who pays no attention to evidence? What kind of justice is that? Who wants a trial before a judge who passes sentence before he hears our excuses and our explanations and our rationalizations?

But my friends, this is the justice of a child, of the child. The child who knows what’s fair and what’s not, and from whose ringing sentence, “It isn’t fair!” there is no appeal. The child who knows when her parents have been arguing, however much they try to pretend it’s all O.K. for her sake. The child knows when he’s being lied to, however good our intentions, and his piercing eyes see through us as if we were so much cellophane. The child who knows the rules for snowball fights and tea-parties, and dispenses the firm justice of the playground. The child who knows how to tame animals more real than the ones of flesh and blood, the animals of the playroom, where Pooh Bear and the Lion King take tea together, and a dinosaur eats cookies from a plate. And all the while, the child oversees this feast with serious attention, and a sense of what is fair and right that puts any adult tribunal to shame.
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This is what the Justice and Lordship of Jesus is like, the just, clear, focused reign of the Son of God. Under the watchful eye of this child who comes forth from the root of Jesse, all our excuses and compromises and rationalizations are laid bare. All of our efforts to bend the rules are exposed. All of our lording it over one another, preying on each other like wolves and bears and lions, is shown up for what it is.

But the good news is that this Child of God who comes to judge us is merciful as well as just. Though he sees right through us, perhaps because he sees right through us, he will also save us, for though he sees how shallow we are he knows we are worth saving. And his loving justice can begin to transform us, and redeem our corrupted nature as surely as it undoes the curse of Adam. The old curse is done away with, transforming serpents into playthings, undoing the ancient enmity and antagonism between the wild and the domestic. Under the miraculous rule of this divine child-king even our own rough nature is transformed, our rough coats of wolf-grey fur, soften and turn to plush. Our shaggy lions’ manes are trimmed and turn bright gold, festive with bows and ribbons. Our leopard spots turn into polka-dots. Rough grizzly bears grow plump and soft and dip their blunted claws into a jar plainly labeled H-U-N-Y. And all of us together gather around the tea-table, colorful bows around our necks and ribbons in our hair, as the Child pours us our tea, and feeds us cakes, and we partake of the sacrament of peace — coming to God’s kingdom, at long last, precisely and exactly as he said we would have to come: as children.

May we then, dear sisters and brothers in Christ, be ready to enter the heavenly child’s-play of the this miracle child, the just and righteous rule of the Son of God, whose infant hands possess all might, majesty, power and dominion, henceforth and forever more.

Prophets with Honor

a sermon delivered at the Annual Convocation of the Brotherhood of St Gregory, at Mt Alvernia, Wappingers Falls NY 

Although Wisdom is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself, she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets.

In one of the Elizabethan period episodes of Rowan Atkinson’s Blackadder, the principal character, plagued with a personal problem of Shakespearean proportions, sets off to find help. One of his goals is to find a wise-woman, and in that quest he meets one of those annoying gnomes who litter quest stories and add plot elements by giving cryptic directions or posing ridiculous riddles. This particular gnome gives the advice, “Two things must ye know about the wise woman. First, that she is wise. And second, that she is a woman!” Our hero departs with this useless bit of guidance, cursing under his breath.

Well, today we get to hear about not just one, but count ‘em, four wise women. And two things must ye know of Elizabeth, Amelia, Sojourner and Harriet: They were wise, and they were women! More importantly, they were wise, and persistent in their wisdom, in an age when the powers and principalities rarely expected wisdom in women, and regarded their persistence as obstinacy or worse. Some few recognized their gifts in their own time, and today we honor them as prophets.
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One irony with which this presents us is summed up in the reading from Proverbs. Here we have a hymn of praise to Wisdom with a capital W, portrayed as nothing other than a woman. The irony is that this tribute comes from a culture that generally did not honor women, or give them much of a place in the councils of leadership or authority. That same book of Proverbs also goes on and on about that other sort of woman, no better than she should be, the harlot who uses her wiles to trap unwary, foolish men to their destruction. One woman offers wealth and riches and is herself more precious than gold and jewels; the other — well, with the other as the saying goes, You pays your money and you takes your choice. This is, of course, part of the well known male view of womankind as either on the pedestal or in the gutter, a pure virgin or a dirty whore.

In their day, Stanton, Bloomer, Truth and Tubman were seen by many men, and probably some women, as of this latter sort — hussies and harlots, harridans and harpies, sluts and slatterns and slags, skanks and skags, bitches and witches: and isn’t it interesting that English provides us such an array of colorfully nasty names for women — and I challenge you to think of some nice nouns for good women when you have the time — and to reflect on how our language shapes our perception of reality. I don’t know if it is true that the Inuit (The People Formerly Known as Eskimo) have forty words for snow, but English has a huge lexicon of nasty names for women, and precious few nice ones.
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But back to our four prophets: There were some few, of course, who saw these women for their virtues:their persistence in seeking justice, their commitment to the betterment of the world they lived in, and their wisdom. And some would call them prophets.

But what is a prophet, after all; and what is wisdom? I would start with another Shakespearean word, soothsayer, which is someone who predicts the future. That’s one way to understand a prophet — one who can accurately predict what is going to happen. In fact that is the test of a true prophet, given a word from God, recorded in Deuteronomy 18:22: If what the prophet predicts in God’s name comes true, they are a true prophet. If not, not. Simple.

But is the prediction itself always so easy to understand and verify — that is, what is being predicted? You may recall the soothsayer from Julius Caesar, who warned, “Beware the Ides of March!” Beware of the date — or what might happen on that date? This prediction didn’t help poor Julius much, but the soothsayer was proved right, in that always 20/20 hindsight. Successful soothsayers, like the oracles of old, and those annoying gnomes in quest stories, owe part of their retrospective success to giving such general or ambiguous warnings. Because human beings are pattern-seeking critters, seeing castles in clouds and faces in inkblots, you can be considered a true prophet if you cast your prediction as vaguely as the oracles or soothsayers of old.

Or you could use the cynical technique Nikos Kazantzakis described in his novel The Last Temptation of Christ. In the vision in which Jesus comes down from the cross to live an ordinary life, one of the apostles returns home and tells Jesus, “I’ve learned the secret of prophecy! When things are going well, tell people they are going to get bad, and when they are going badly tell them it is going to get better! It always works!” It still works for politicians of every sort.
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But I am less interested in the flim-flam men of old, or of now, when we have such excellent women before us. What I want to stress is that soothsayer and prophet at base mean, not “One who predicts the future,” but “One who speaks the truth.” And there is a lot of wisdom in that, for an accurate assessment of the present is the best way to think about and plan for what is possible in the future. A firm and discerning grasp of the present rules out impossibilities for the future, and allows one to focus on the range of what may be most probable — as that other famous wise guy, Sherlock Holmes, observed, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” A chess master is a master precisely because of the ability to focus on the state of play at each moment, to see only the range of possibilities for the next sequence of moves, eliminating impossibilities to weigh the optimum possible outcome and urge it into the best actual move.

So the real wisdom lies in understanding that the truth — what is — is not just possible, and is never improbable, as strange as it may seem. It just is. And as I’ve often said, Reality is our friend. And engaging with reality, persisting in discernment, asking the questions, searching for answers, knocking at the doors even to wake the sleeping and embarrassed friend (for Reality is sometimes drowsy and often embarrassing, and unknown until known) — these actions of asking, seeking, and persisting in knocking at the door of Reality are the tasks of the wise.
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This is all the more true for those who worship the God who goes by the name The One Who Is, the Great I AM! Those who engage with Reality at its deepest levels, who plumb the depths of Holy Wisdom, become, as Proverbs says, “friends of God and prophets.” We have such friends before us today: Elizabeth, Amelia, Sojourner and Harriet — one of them even known as Truth! You can see their image and read their story in the handy Office app, so I won’t repeat it here. Suffice it to say that they were wise, and they were women — in times and places where few associated those categories.

But they persisted in the quest — not so much as those sought out, but as seekers themselves. And what they sought was justice, charity, equality, and truth. They knocked on the doors of Reality, and a sleepy and reluctant world roused and still rouses itself to respond with like justice, in all charity, and by and for the truth. May God give us strength to do the same, Soli Deo Gloria — to the glory of God alone. In the Name of The One Who Is, whom we know as our Maker, Defender, Redeemer — and Friend.

— Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Web of Tragedy

I have been in Baltimore since Monday, to be met with the unrest following the tragic death of Freddy Gray. This strikes close to home, literally. My Baltimore neighborhood (Bolton Hill) shares the same zip code with the neighborhood in which Freddy Gray lived and was taken into custody, and in which much of the unrest and protest and violence has taken place. This was highlighted in a recent story on the PBS Newshour.

The helicopters have been a nightly accompaniment to lost sleep, and have led me to sundry thoughts, which I share with you in no particular order.

• The War on Drugs has had little effect on drugs but has impoverished and criminalized whole populations, here and abroad.
• Who says racism is a thing of the past?
• When looking police in the eye is a crime, who are the criminals?
• And when doesn't flight from police seem like a good idea?
• Abuse of suspects is a heinous crime, even when it doesn't result in serious injury or death. If the "rough ride" is the norm, is it any wonder people hate the police?
• Some in the BPD seem to believe in taking justice into their own vans.
• Time to reevaluate flight as probable cause for pursuit.
• When does what amounts to entrapment become the primary modality of law enforcement?
• “Resistance is futile” ought not be the motto of law enforcement.
• When does media coverage become the cause rather than the observer (cue Heisenberg... and I don't mean the meth king of Breaking Bad.) When does covering the news create the news?
• And speaking of media, since when does freedom of the press mean not obeying the law? There are more media than protestors out after the curfew. 
• I wish Elijah Cumming would run for President.
• How does the view from a helicopter differ from the view from a drone, and to what extent does it further dehumanize the populace. (Cue Harry Lime on moving dots from the top of the Ferris wheel in Vienna.)
• Who doesn't think reactions would be very different if Freddy Gray were white? Of course, were he white the whole situation would be different from the get go, so doesn't that tell us that the problem is systemic?
• Some kids need to be forcibly reminded that their grandmas now have no where to get their heart medicine.

That's the summary for now. God bless us all, and may sanity prevail.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Goliath Sometimes Wins

Further comment superfluous.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

On the Ranking of Rights

Thinking Anglicans has a very thorough round-up of reports (including the full statement of the court) concerning the European Court of Human Rights decision on some alleged infringements of religious rights on the part of employers.

The principle upon which the court bases its decision should come as no surprise to those familiar with human rights, that is: that one's exercise of a right should not constitute an infringement of another's exercise of a right — whether the same right or a different one. In particular, it is abundantly clear that the right to one's religious beliefs and practices does not include the right to deny others a public accommodation or service simply on the basis of one’s religious objection to the manner of life or behavior of that other person — including his or her own religious beliefs.

The court found that the employer who said an employee could not wear a cross because it conflicted with brand identity had indeed infringed upon her rights; but in the case of an employee who was offered an alternative way to express her religion because the means she chose to express it constituted a possible hazard (offered a pin instead of a cross on a necklace), the court found that the offer was reasonable. The other two cases involved people whose employers required them to provide services to mixed-sex and same-sex couples alike, and the court ruled that their refusal on the basis religious objection infringed upon the rights of those to whom they wished to deny service.

This decision, taken as a whole, provides a good balance in addressing the hierarchy of rights. If we accept one legal definition of a right as not simply a freedom to carry out a given activity, but as placing an obligation upon others (whether individuals or society as a whole) it is perhaps easier to see the issue in terms of a ranking of obligations: those who provide public accommodations are obliged to provide them without discrimination; employers are obliged to protect their customers and clients, and provide services without discriminating; a religious believer who feels an obligation to profess his or her faith through the wearing of some visible symbol, or to profess a given belief, has a right to do so unless it conflicts with some other duty which they are also obliged to carry out in reference to someone else.

It is earnestly to be hoped that a similar clarity of thought can be applied to the issue of the provision of health insurance.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

Let their deaths not have been in vain

Friday the 25th of March will be the 100th anniversary of one of the most terrible and tragic events in New York history, the deadly fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Most of those who perished in the fire, or leaped to their deaths rather than burn, were young immigrant women making a paltry wage in conditions best described as poor; 146 died in the flames and smoke, or on the pavement below. Witnesses at the time were helpless to do anything more than listen to the distant screams and the dull, repeated thuds of the falling bodies as they struck the street. It is a horror that led to changed laws governing safety, and spurred the growth of the labor movement.

In the midst of the tragedies of today, it is good to remember those of the past. In the face of injustices and inequalities, and the exploitation of workers in substandard circumstances at home and abroad, it is even better to do something positive, and to be well-informed about those who make the goods we purchase, who grow the food we eat, who care for us and those we love.

Let us do justice, love mercy, walk with God in our sisters and brothers, for as we do to the least of them we do to the greatest of all.

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The Kheel Center at Cornell University has a superb online exhibit and resources about the tragedy.